In recent years, there has been a considerable concern with respect to making frugal use of washing water used in the photographic processing process since the cost of water supplied by cities has increased and further attempts to eliminate the discharge of waste water have been very expensive. In addition, the drastic increase of petroleum rates has caused an economic problem with respect to heating washing water. However, it has been impossible to remove the washing step from the usual processing process of conventional photographic materials. This is because the removal of the washing step causes a problem in that the processing reagents included in photographic materials are separated therefrom onto the surfaces thereof causing stains and changing the color of the silver images. Accordingly, the silver images may lose their colors, or the dye images may change their colors or lose colors.
The removal of a fixing step (which, in case of color photographic materials, corresponds to both the bleaching and fixing steps, that is, a desilvering step), though it is convenient for making the photographic processing process simple and rapid, is not desirable because it causes an increase in staining. The stains are mainly comprised of silver stain and color stain. In the above-described case, both silver stains and color stains are increased. In other words, stains can be removed by fixation in the case of black-and-white photographic materials. However, color stains cannot be removed by desilvering though silver stain can be reduced thereby in the case of color photographic materials.
If both the washing step and the fixing or the desilvering step are omitted staining will be inevitably increased. When usual photographic materials are subjected to usual processings not including the use of any intensifying baths, stain generation cannot be prevented even by processing with a low pH bath.
However, with photographic materials having low silver halide contents, it is known that the fixing step or the bleach-fix step can be omitted. These steps are generally omitted because silver stain is generated to a small extent due to low silver content. In the case of color photographic materials, however, color stain is generated unless thorough washing is carried out. For instance, though color photographic materials that do not require washing, such as Linagraph 705, are on the market, increase in stain over time is observed with such materials.